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Last night was rack of lamb, seasoned and cooked on the grill to medium rare. I picked up a green cauliflower, which was among a beautiful selection of purple, gold and white cauliflowers. I mentioned before that I am loving mashed cauliflower, with the addition of a Yukon Gold potato to beef up the texture. I steamed the green beauty, then mashed along with the potato to a creamy pale green that was interesting. The addition of lots of snipped chives from our garden, a little butter and some half and half made for a very good side with the lamb.

Gene was playing with a new headset that allows him to turn the sound up and down separately from the universal TV remote. He has a hearing issue and I will not tolerate the loud TV. He was quite thrilled with the way they were working and decided to keep them on so he could still listen to the program we were watching while he was tending to the grill on the patio. All was going great until his attention was on the headset and not on the food and the rack caught on fire. He got it out quickly and we still got our medium rare lamb but with a nice char on the outside. He does like the idea of not having to miss a minute of a program now, he will just have to get better at multi-tasking!

"...To undersalt deliberately in the name of dietary chic is to omit from the music of cookery the indispensable bass line over which all tastes and smells form their harmonies." -- Robert Farrar Capon

Also called tsa chaing mein or zhajiangmian. Ground pork stir-fried with soy bean paste and minced scallions, served over noodles and various condiments (I usually use blanched bean sprouts and slivered cucumber).

Also called tsa chaing mein or zhajiangmian. Ground pork stir-fried with soy bean paste and minced scallions, served over noodles and various condiments (I usually use blanched bean sprouts and slivered cucumber).

Frank Deis wrote:It is very good! Wonder if anyone has heard of this soup? It's been served in the US Senate cafeteria for 110 years.

Sure have! It's very similar to our family bean soup recipe. When my brother and sister and I were kids, my parents took us to The Nation's Capital to see all the historic sights, and a highlight of the trip was a visit to the Senate Cafeteria ... for bean soup, of course. We unanimously decided that Mom's was better.

Tonight at our casa is fresh crab cakes with tomato corn relish and citrus aioli. Found some beautiful asparagus at Raley's yesterday, looked like first of the season batch. Will char them a little to serve as a side dish.

Tonight is flank steak with an ancho chilie marinade, grilled to medium rare. Sweet onions and an assortment of mushrooms sauteed to golden brown, with a touch of balsamic vinegar. We will split a baked spud. Plus, a salad with arugula, red leaf lettuce, parsley, celery heart, asian cuke, baby red scallions from our garden, dressed with a walnut oil and cabernet red wine vinegar vinaigrette. All this while watching the Oscars!!!

Yesterday, I was just planning some grilled pork chops and then one of Noel Ermitano's posts kicked me in the fanny about stepping up and out with something a bit more adventurous. After all, my pantry was pretty bare (haven't restocked since returning from our trip), a situation in which lacking the luxury of options I usually do some of my most creative thinking. The result didn't disappoint: after a salad of chopped tomatoes and cocktail peppers with a feta-basil vinaigrette, we had a stack each of two thin cut pork chops braised in milk/red wine vinegar/mustard/herbs d'Provence garnished with roasted celery and candied black oil-cured olives--an aged Rhone went perfectly with that.